MURDER & MERLOT

A spectacular summer festival. A bitter vineyard rivalry. A vintage cover-up.



Isabella "Bella" Rossi is finally ready to relax and celebrate the Summer Solstice in the village piazza with Maresciallo Matteo De Luca, her three-legged terrier Dante, and a flowing glass of sweet wine. But the joyful midnight fireworks and traditional barrel-tapping ceremony end in absolute horror when a massive, decorative oak cask belonging to her family's fiercest competitor-the wealthy and arrogant Tenuta Nera estate-violently explodes on the main stage.



Instead of two hundred gallons of premium Merlot, the shattered barrel reveals the body of a man dressed in a ruined tuxedo.



The victim is quickly identified as Marco Conti, a ruthless corporate wine distributor from Milan who had been secretly playing the local Tuscan vineyards against each other in a vicious bidding war. As the tranquil village is thrown into chaos, the bitter, multi-generational feud between the Rossi family and the owners of Tenuta Nera instantly escalates from petty insults to a deadly turf war. When the wealthy Nera patriarch publicly accuses Bella of planting the body to ruin his reputation, he uses his billions to freeze Villa Della Luna's supply chains and starve them out of the valley.



With Nonna Rosa aggressively fighting back the only way she knows how-by dominating the village food markets with a rogue wood-fired pizza stand-Bella and Matteo must launch a dangerous undercover investigation. Navigating a treacherous web of corporate espionage, poisoned grapes, and multi-million-euro blackmail ledgers, Bella must untangle a deadly vintage cover-up before the killer burns her family's legacy to the ground.



"Murder & Merlot" is the explosive eleventh installment in The Tuscan Vineyard Mysteries. Packed with small-town drama, fierce rivalries, and mouth-watering Italian feasts, this cozy thriller proves that the wine business is cutthroat, and revenge is a dish best served cold.